Bachelor of Science in Bauingenieurwesen

The Civil Engineering Program includes the planning, designing, construction, and maintenance of structures and altering geography to suit human needs. Some of the numerous subdivisions are transportation (eg, railroad facilities and highways); hydraulics (eg, river control, irrigation, swamp draining, water supply, and sewage disposal); and structures (eg, buildings, bridges, and tunnels).

Professional Component for Civil Engineering

The program educational objectives leads to producing quality civil engineers to meet the needs of the profession and the employers. Accordingly, the program has a well-established curriculum in place, balancing scientific, technical, and professional components inline with the constituency needs, institutional mission, and program educational objectives. The program prepares our students for engineering practice by integrating the scientific, technical, and professional components, and culminating in a project-oriented major design experience.

Preparation of Students for Engineering Practice

The program has a well balanced curriculum with focus in four areas: environmental, structural, transportation, and water resources. The environmental engineering focus area was developed with input from industry, local, state, and federal government agencies as well as other educational institutions.

The program requires 128 credit hours with a balanced distribution among math and science, social and humanities and engineering science and design. The program incorporates professional components starting at the freshman year. Each of the four focus areas in the program has an in-depth design component.

Incorporation of Professional Components into the Curriculum

The program develops skills in our graduates in the areas of problem solving; design of a component, process or system; effective communication; team work; use of modern tools and techniques; knowledge of contemporary issues and ethical responsibilities; and the recognition of the need for life-long learning for professional growth. The program curriculum is structured such that these skills are developed early in the freshman year and culminates in the senior year with a capstone design course. All design courses include design projects. These design projects are presented to students, faculty, professionals from industry, and representatives from the local, state and federal agencies.

Annual Undergraduate CE Enrollment and Graduation Data

CE Bachelor's Degrees Awarded

Founded in 1912, TSU is a comprehensive, urban, co-educational, land-grant institution in Nashville, Tennessee. The university has been served by seven presidents, including Dr. Glenda Baskin Glover, who is currently serving as our eighth president.

SACS Accreditation

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools granted accreditation to TSU in 1946. In August 1951, the Tennessee State Board of Education approved university status. The resulting reorganization of the institution’s educational program created the Graduate School, the School of Arts & Sciences, the School of Education, and the School of Engineering. Provisions were also made for the later addition of other schools in agriculture, business, and home economics.

Land-grant University Status

Under the name Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State University, the institution achieved full land-grant university status in August 1958. The Land-Grant University Program included the School of Agriculture & Home Economics, the Graduate School, the Division of Extension and Continuing Education, and the Department of Aerospace Studies. The School of Allied Health Professions and the School of Business were created in 1974, and the School of Nursing was established in 1979.

Name change: Tennessee State University

After Walter Davis retired as president in 1968, another TSU alumnus, Andrew Torrence, was named the University’s third president. During his relatively brief tenure, the state legislature dropped “Agricultural & Industrial” and officially changed the name to Tennessee State University.

Merger with UT of Nashville

When Frederick Humphries became TSU’s president in 1975, Nashville was also home to a second public four-year university. The Knoxville-based University of Tennessee began offering extension credit in Nashville in 1947 and expanded its programs throughout the 1960s. By 1971, it was accredited as a degree-granting institution that occupied new quarters at the corner of Tenth and Charlotte Avenues. But in 1968, TSU faculty member Rita Sanders filed a lawsuit, which became known as Geier v. Tennessee, alleging a dual system of higher education in Tennessee based on race. On July 1, 1979, the case was settled by a court order merging the former University of Tennessee at Nashville with TSU. As president, Humphries was the first to face the challenge of maintaining the balance between TSU’s role as one of America’s preeminent historically black universities and its emerging status as a comprehensive national university.

The Geier v. Tennessee case, however, remained alive for 32 years. Rita Sanders Geier was joined by the U.S. Department of Justice and by TSU professors Ray Richardson and H. Coleman McGinnis as co-plaintiffs in the suit. After numerous court-ordered plans failed to produce progress, all parties achieved a mediated consent decree that was ordered by the court on January 4, 2001.

Capital Improvements and Progress

Following a year as interim president, Otis Floyd became TSU’s fifth chief executive in 1987 and continued moving the university forward, initiating efforts that resulted in the state general assembly providing an unprecedented $112 million for capital improvements in 1988. Under this plan, nearly all campus buildings were renovated and eight new facilities were constructed, including the Floyd-Payne Campus Center, the Ned McWherter Administration Building, the Wilma Rudolph Residence Center, and the Performing Arts Center.

Then, in 1990, the Tennessee Board of Regents appointed Dr. Floyd its chancellor, opening the way for James Hefner to become TSU’s sixth president in 1991. Hefner supervised additional improvements to campus facilities and fostered enrollment growth to an all-time high of 9,100 students. The Otis Floyd Nursery Crops Research Station in McMinnville was dedicated in 1996, and, in 1999, researchers at the TSU Center for Automated Space Science were the first to discover a planet outside our solar system.

Melvin N. Johnson became the university’s seventh president in June of 2005 and was instrumental in continuing to bring national attention to the university by recognizing the Freedom Riders 14, engaging the university in the Tennessee Campus Compact, receiving national awards for community service and engagement, awarded $8 million for Race to the Top Funds by President Glover and Pat HairstonPresident Obama, opening the university’s doors to flood victims and businesses, and obtaining Community Engagement Classification by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

In the University’s 100-year history, Dr. Glenda Baskin Glover became president in January 2013 and continues making changes to further emphasize the excellence for which TSU is known worldwide.